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he provincial government has taken steps to prepare for a major B.C. earthquake, investing millions of dollars in an early warning system and spending billions to seismically retrofit schools and important infrastructure such as bridges.

The province recently held an emergency exercise on Vancouver Island to test its response to an earthquake.

But it has shown little interest in dealing with thousands of privately owned buildings in the province that were constructed largely before the early 1970s and do not meet modern earthquake safety standards.

That job has been left to municipalities, which have relied on passive triggers that only come into effect when building owners change an old building’s use or undertake major renovations.

Each level of government appears reluctant to tackle the issue head on, instead looking to another level of government to take the lead.

In Victoria in 2015, city council flirted with the idea of introducing a mandatory seismic retrofit law but decided it was unworkable and that it would create a hardship for building owners.

Victoria has used tax incentives and grants to retrofit heritage buildings, thus providing seismic upgrades to unreinforced brick buildings in its downtown.

However, progress has been slow.

It hasn't exactly been a spark plug for change.

John Clague on the B.C. Seismic Safety Council

About 75 buildings have had full or partial seismic upgrades since 1989 under various heritage-building incentive programs, according to estimates from the Victoria Civic Heritage Trust, which oversees some components of the program and provides advice to the city.

In Vancouver, hundreds of buildings on a list of seismically-at-risk buildings compiled by engineering consultants for the city in the early 1990s — including aging brick apartments that provide rooms to the city’s poorest on the east side — appear to have had no seismic upgrades.

Both Vancouver and Victoria say the province should become involved.

In 1986, the State of California passed a law requiring local governments in areas at risk of earthquakes to identify all unreinforced masonry buildings — typically brick buildings with no reinforcing steel — and develop a risk mitigation plan.

By 2006, of 238 jurisdictions, 134 had adopted mandatory strengthening programs representing nearly three quarters of the unreinforced masonry buildings, according to the California Seismic Safety Commission. Other jurisdictions that did not mandatory strengthening programs used methods such as public notification of seismic risks to encourage retrofits.

In the U.S., seismic safety commissions in Oregon, Washington state, Alaska and California have been a key conduit for recommendations to state governments, including on the need for seismic retrofit programs and policies.

In British Columbia, only once was the issue of the existing building stock raised at the B.C. Seismic Safety Council, a provincial-federal group created in 2012 that is meant to develop recommendations to improve seismic safety in B.C., according to a review of minutes of the group provided to Postmedia News.

The group has focused on other topics, including early warning systems for earthquakes and tsunamis, which the B.C. government has acted on.

While seismic safety efforts focus on infrastructure such as the Lions Gate Bridge, older private buildings are neglected.

The B.C. government’s Inter-Agency Emergency Preparedness Council — largely provincial ministry and agency representatives including B.C. Hydro and ICBC — has not examined the issue of retrofits of private buildings, according to a review of minutes of its meetings dating back to 2011.

The B.C. Seismic Safety Council reports to this inter-agency group.

John Clague, a professor of earth sciences and chair of natural hazard research at Simon Fraser University, is one of several academics that sit on the B.C. Seismic Safety Council.

“It hasn’t exactly been a spark plug for change,” said Clague of the council.

The B.C. Seismic Safety Council has a much less-diverse makeup than similar seismic commissions in California, Oregon and Alaska, which, unlike the B.C. council, were created under law and report directly to their state legislatures. Councils in B.C. and the U.S. include federal and provincial government representatives and academics, but the U.S. groups also include engineers in private practice, local government representatives and members appointed to represent the public at large.

According to a record of its minutes, the last meeting of the B.C. Seismic Safety Council was almost 18 months ago.

Steven Kuan, who sat on the council as a seismic engineer with the province’s building and safety branch, brought up in a February 2012 meeting the issue of seismic retrofits. He noted that while the B.C. building code dealt with new buildings, there was also a need to improve the existing building stock, according to minutes of the meeting.

In an interview, Kuan said he remembers the council as simply being a place for representatives, largely from the province, to discuss ideas on seismic preparedness.

Calling it a council was a bit of an overstatement, he said.

Kuan, who has a doctorate in civil engineering and is now with the industry-government research organization FP Innovations, said there remains a need to address the seismic risk of older, existing buildings aggressively because relying on incentives only improves the situation slowly.

“A little bit more comprehensive approach is needed, so that we can kind of copy what California is doing,” said Kuan, noting he was expressing his opinion and wasn’t speaking for FP Innovations.

At times, the province has suggested responsibility for addressing the seismic risk of the private buildings should belong with the federal government.

In 2014, Spencer Chandra Herbert, the Vancouver-West End NDP MLA, sent a letter to Attorney General Suzanne Anton, who then oversaw emergency preparedness, calling for an inventory of seismically-at-risk buildings. Her reply did not directly answer his question on the inventory but said responsibility for building and damage assessment fell on Natural Resources Canada.

In a written response to questions from Postmedia, the B.C. government’s emergency management agency said it did not have plans to either require, or provide incentives for, retrofitting of older private buildings that don’t meet modern seismic building codes.

However, in an interview, Naomi Yamamoto, minister of state for emergency management, said the issue is on the province’s radar.

“The reason why it is concerning to us is we may have a great seismically-upgraded building — or a brand-new building built to the latest seismic standards — but right beside it is a building that is vulnerable. So that building goes down in an earthquake. Then the seismically-upgraded building, or the building that withstands (the earthquakes) actually can’t be used, because of the damage the other building has caused,” said Yamamoto.

She said an inventory of seismically-at-risk buildings would be a useful starting point and noted the possibility of utilizing B.C. Assessment data.

The agency assesses the value of buildings, but also has data on construction type, size, building use and construction year, as well as upgrades to buildings.

Naomi Yamamoto, B.C.’s minister of state for emergency management, takes part in an earthquake simulation exercise earlier this year.

But she said it was “too early” to say whether the province would help with funding in such a project.

Yamamoto did not rule out some type of incentive, pointing to B.C. Hydro’s rebates for appliances and home renovations that reduce energy use. However, she was less enthusiastic about ordering seismic retrofits.

Herbert, the West End MLA, characterized the lack of inventories of seismically-at-risk buildings, and a program to reduce the risk, as a “big blind spot.”

He said it is good that municipalities and the province are planning their response for a major earthquake, upgrading their own infrastructure, and encouraging people to have earthquake kits in their homes, but to not address seismically-at-risk private buildings is ignoring a key issue.

“I’d like the province to step in quite strongly. It’s our whole economic future and our health and our community future that is at risk if we have an earthquake,” said Herbert.

In 2014, the City of Vancouver told Herbert, in response to a letter similar letter to the one he sent the province, that it was providing recommendations to the province as part of consultations the B.C. government was holding on earthquakes.

A key recommendation it made, the city said, was that the province, with the aid of local governments and the private sector, financial institutions and the insurance industry, develop a program to provide incentives, to encourage and, in some cases, to require seismic upgrades to existing building stock based on risk.

“We believe that such a program would (work) best if applied provincially to create a level playing field,” said the city.

In a written response to questions from Postmedia, Vancouver city officials suggested asking the province about any plan to provide incentives or to order seismic upgrades of private buildings.

In an interview, Vancouver’s emergency management director Daniel Stevens said it “absolutely” makes sense for senior levels of government to be involved in a program to reduce the seismic risk of older, private buildings.

Added Pat Ryan, the city’s chief building officer: “It really does make sense with a more regional approach, particularly towards a mandatory-type program.”

In Victoria, in rejecting as unworkable the idea of a mandatory retrofit program, the city council decided it would be better to approach the Union of B.C. Municipalities to develop a province-wide plan that could be pitched to the B.C. government, one that would not create “financial disincentives” for property owners.

Nearly 18 months later, the city has not yet presented a position to the UBCM.

“That will be our next step,” said Andrea Hudson, the City of Victoria’s assistant director of community planning.